


like the sky is new

by glitteration



Series: washed clean [2]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: F/M, Practical Magic AU, feat. all the extensive raven backstory i wrote and couldn’t use in washed clean proper, no seriously this is so sappy, shameless fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-17
Updated: 2018-06-18
Packaged: 2019-05-24 11:48:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,789
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14954117
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glitteration/pseuds/glitteration
Summary: and it's warm and real and brightand the world has somehow shiftedall at once everything looks differentnow that i see youORfive times bellamy fell in love with raven (and one time she fell in love with him)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [convenientmisfires](https://archiveofourown.org/users/convenientmisfires/gifts).



> technically a sequel to washed clean and some of this won’t make perfect sense if you haven’t read that one, but it’s not strictly necessary to follow along. 
> 
> just in case: it’s a practical magic au, raven is a witch who accidentally made herself immortal, bellamy is essentially marcus’ adopted son, aaaaaand that’s about all you need if you’re just here for the braven of it all and hella long kabby ain’t your bag.
> 
> also ILU SAMWISE

**i. AGE TWELVE**

“‘Nother sandwich, kid?”

Bellamy narrows his eyes at ‘kid’, but he nods and Raven looks back to the waitress. “Another two, then.”

The familiar indignation he remembers from being a kid, when people looked at him and then at O and made sad faces and then kept walking stings his throat. “I didn’t ask for two.”

“It’s a bribe, not charity. But you don’t have to eat it if you don’t want, Bellamy.” Her eyes meet his, dark and frank and warm even though he knows he’s being ungrateful and he should just take the stupid sandwich. “Your call.”

He shrugs, picking at the fries left on his plate. “Clarke said you’re a witch too.” And that Bellamy could trust her no matter what, but as much as he likes Clarke already he’ll only accept the first at face value.

“Clarke’s got a big mouth.” Raven doesn’t look mad, though, and without even checking to see if anybody’s watching them she makes the fry in his hand dance across the table and onto her plate. Popping it into her mouth, she grins. “You don’t seem surprised.”

“Clarke floated Octavia yesterday.” Who is a lot bigger than a fry. It had just been for a second, but still.

Raven gapes at him. “She did _what_?”

Uncomfortable, Bellamy dips his chin and looks away. “Just a little.”

“Oh for—“ Her brow wrinkles, like she’s mad, but her eyes are proud. “Don’t worry, you didn’t just bust her or anything but don’t let her do that again, okay? Clarke’s powerful, but she’s a little young to hit the mark on reliable one hundred percent of the time. I’d rather keep your sister’s noggin un-cracked.”

His chest squeezes and relaxes like he’s been closed inside somebody’s fist. “I will.”

“Good.” Raven steals another fry, then sits back her in chair. “So, how are the lovebirds?”

“Gross.”

“Accurate, but not what I meant. Hey, thanks.” She takes the new sandwiches, then turns back to him. “So?”

Taking a giant bite of one of the new sandwiches, he rolls his eyes. “Marcus likes her. They flirt a lot. But...”

“But?”

Bellamy hesitates, torn over revealing Marcus’ secrets, even if Marcus is keeping secrets himself. “He thinks Callie knows what happened to somebody who got killed.” Raven’s face goes blank for just a second and she looks old, even though her face doesn’t change. It reminds him of the pictures, brown with age and hung along the walls of the staircase. When she doesn’t say anything else, he blurts out the question he’s been sitting on since Clarke introduced him to Raven and told him to keep her a secret. “How come you’re not old?”

“...what?” Raven’s eyes zoom back to him and Bellamy wishes he hadn’t asked. “Say that again.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“Yes, you did. I’m not mad, Bellamy, I promise.”

“I asked why you’re not old.” She stares at him, cocking a brow, and he licks his dry lips. “You’re in old pictures, but you look the same in all of them.”

“You noticed the pictures?”

“Clarke and Octavia were playing. I got bored. They’re just by the stairs, I didn’t think I wasn’t supposed to look.”

“No, no, it’s just—” She whistles, low and long. “I have literally never had to have this talk with somebody I wasn’t expecting to have it with, is all. Either I’m getting slow in my old age or you got some witch in you, kiddo, because you saw through a pretty powerful spell.”

A fist squeezes his chest again, but gentler this time. More like a hug. “I did?”

“Yep.” She steals a few more fries, munching on them thoughtfully. “Hey, can you do me a favor?” He nods, and she flashes him a grin again. “Let’s keep the not-old thing between us, okay? Clarke’s still in the dark, and kind of a Griffin right of passage to figure it out. Plus I’m pretty sure things are shaken up around here as it is anyway.”

Clarke doesn’t even know yet. Raven is their secret, but this is just _his_. Bellamy’s stomach flutters, and he shifts in his chair. “I won’t tell anybody.”

“Atta boy.”

Emboldened, he asks, “Is it because you’re a witch?”

Raven hesitates. “There’s a long answer and a short answer, and the short answer is yes, it’s because I’m a witch.”

“What’s the long answer?”

She gives him an approving smile. “That’s more of a ‘when you’re old enough to drink’ story, but the short version of the long version is I have very bad taste in men and made a couple truly stupid life choices.” She looks old again, and far away, and Bellamy feels a familiar anger gather in his throat. Raven notices and pats his hand, shaking her head. “It was way too long ago to waste energy getting mad about, kiddo. Thank you, though.”

He ducks his head, nodding, too caught up in her appreciation to care about the nickname. “‘s nothing.” She winks at him and he falls in love with her, just a little. “Still a little mad, though.”

Raven’s laughter is startled, and when she reaches over to ruffle his hair he lets her. “Now, if only I’d met a guy like you back in the day.”

“You met me now.” The words come from somewhere deep in his chest, yanked up and out of his throat before he can realize how dumb they are and shut up.

Raven doesn’t laugh at him, though. She just purses her lips like he’s said something important and steals another fry. “Good point.”

 

**ii. AGE FOURTEEN**

The tux Marcus bought him itches. Bellamy tugs at the neck again, wishing he could just take the stupid tie choking him off already.

“Whoa whoa whoa, let’s not choke out the best man before this thing even gets started.”

Raven’s voice makes him jump, and he realizes somehow she managed to sneak up on him while he fidgeted like a little kid. Blushing hotly, he manages to get out, “I’m the best man.”

“Yeah, exactly. C’mere, let me fix that thing.” Slapping his hands away from his neck, Raven does something that manages to both loosen the tie and make it lay flat against his shirt. “There you go, de-noosified.”

“Thanks.” Raven’s hands stay on his collar, fiddling with his shirt, and Bellamy wishes with all his heart that he _was_ part witch, because if he was he could make time stop.

“You have to put on your dress, Clarke, or I swear…” Callie skids around the corner, her own dress nowhere to be seen. “Raven, would you please tell Clarke if she misses her mom’s wedding I’m going to be forced to turn her into a newt?”

“I have to finish the lights, Aunt Callie! Raven, tell her I have to do the lights first.”

Safe with her back to the interlopers, Raven good naturedly rolls her eyes at Bellamy. “No rest for the immortal. Clarke, honey, let’s go get the lights done together so your aunt doesn’t have a heart attack. Okay?”

When they open the doors an hour later to start the wedding party’s procession in, even Bellamy’s own eyes widen a little. He’s spent enough time around magic to get used to the little things, but the twinkling fairy lights scattered all through the little chapel glow brightly without a single cord in sight, and out of the corner of his eye Bellamy can see some of them swirling in slow, lazy circles, only stilling their movement when he looks at them head-on.

When Raven takes his arm, he leans in close enough to whisper, “The lights look good.” She always smells like jasmine, and up this close he feels wrapped in delicate vines and surrounded entirely by their perfume.

“Clarke did a good job. If I was going to get married, I’d let that kid do the lights anyday. Kind of makes me want to do it just to get some, actually.”

“I guess I could marry you.” He stumbles a little, mid-step, red as the flowers lining the pews, but Raven pretends she doesn’t notice.

“Well, then, if I pull the trigger on lights mania two-point-oh, you’re head of the line.”

“Deal.”

Maybe it’s his imagination, but Bellamy could swear the lights on his periphery swoop in wilder circles on their way to the altar, echoing the beat of his heart.

 

**iii. AGE SIXTEEN**

His key won’t work on the door. Bellamy curses and tries again, fumbling at the lock and wincing when his efforts produce an angry squeal of metal on metal and not an open door.

“Had some fun tonight, huh?”

The moon spins crazily as Bellamy wheels to face Raven’s amused voice, and his knees lock against the way his body wants to follow that same trajectory. “I can’t get the door.”

“Yeah, I can see that. Here, let me.” She looks at him like she always does (fond, but the kind of fond he feels for Octavia, not the kind he feels for her) but behind her is the ocean and the moon glints off her hair and Bellamy finds the welcome mat under his knees without a second thought.

“The moon’s in your hair, Raven.”

“Oh, _wow_ , you are so lucky the girls are asleep. You’re pretty pickled, kiddo.”

“Yeah.” There’s no use denying it; with Abby and Marcus gone for the weekend and Callie out with her girlfriend, Miller’s offer of his dad’s whiskey and a bonfire felt like a great way to work around the way being alone with Raven made his palms sweat. “But it is, though. The moon. In your hair.”

“I’m upgrading you from pickled to smashed.” She ruffles his hair, nails scratching lightly at his scalp like she does to the cats and Bellamy just _knows_ ; what he knows is as maddeningly hard to grasp as the lights in her hair, but the knowledge seeps down into his bones all the same. “You’re not gonna be getting up those stairs alone, are you?”

Thoughtfully, Bellamy considers the semi-liquid state of his knees. “I can sleep on the couch.”

“No you can’t, you’re a foot taller than it is long.” Opening the door with a flick of her hand, Raven grins down at him. “Ready to go for a little magic carpet ride?” Floating doesn’t feel like he thought it would. There’s no weightlessness, or even much of a sense of movement, even as Raven nods towards the stairs and his body follows, ground a good four feet below him.

“Watch your head, okay? I’m careful, but accidents happen.”

The house floats by in a lazy blur, nowhere near as important as Raven’s eyes on his, amused and full of warmth when she neatly drops him in bed, with barely a bounce to prove he hadn’t been there all along. Bellamy closes his eyes when she strokes his hair, breathing deep and pulling in flowers and tea and a hint of scorched metal, the things that make Raven Raven.

“I love you,” he tells her seriously, eyes going half-crossed with the effort needed to keep them open. It’s important she know, even if a shadow of the self he’ll be tomorrow screams a warning.

“I love you too, kid.”

She doesn’t hear; or she doesn’t understand, and Bellamy reaches up with one clumsy hand to grab her own and hold it tight. “No, Raven, I _love_ you.”

For a moment she’s stone; then she smiles and it’s not happy. He would do anything to make it a happy smile, but she’s already speaking before he can tell her so. “Trust me, I’m not cut out for love anymore.”

“But you said…”

She inhales, brow creasing. “I meant it. I do love you, Bellamy. And I’m sure I’ll love the man you grow into just as much.”

“Then _why_?”

“That man’s going to age, and I’m not. It’s not fair to you—to anybody.”

“I don’t care about fair, Raven. I care about _you_.” There’s so much more he could say, but sleep drags at his limbs and pulls him closer to unconsciousness with each breath even as frustrated tears gather behind his eyelids and threaten to spill over. “I don’t care, I promise.”

“Shhh, shhh.” She strokes his hair again and starts to hum a tune he can’t quite make out, the notes seizing his heart and making darkness crinkle at the edges of his vision. “Just sleep, Bellamy. It’ll be better in the morning.”

The next morning he wakes up without a hangover and with a vague memory of a dream where Raven kissed him and he tasted salt on her lips.


	2. Chapter 2

**iv. AGE TWENTY-ONE**

For his twenty first birthday, one of the presents Abby and Marcus give him is taking Clarke and Octavia on a weekend trip to the city, leaving him the house and permission to throw a party as long as he promises not to burn it down and that he won’t let anyone in the greenhouse.

Raven told him she stayed behind to supervise, but supervising looked more like having a good time with the rest of them. She’d even danced with him once, brace jingling merrily as she spun him around and around in an exaggerated attempt at a tango.

“So, how’s it feel to finally be street legal?” Now that the house is empty of everyone but them, she grins at him from across the table. He’d had to refuse the offer of shots; he can’t take another drop and stay sober enough to carry a conversation with embarrassing himself, but Raven’s magically aided tolerance puts his to shame. Glitter speckles her cheeks, the bottle of tequila between them making her eyes brighter and her tongue looser.

It makes him feel anything but adult. “I’m not a car.”

“Pffft.” Waving the objection off, she takes another healthy pull off the bottle. “You know what I mean.”

“Fine. I don’t know, it doesn’t feel like a big difference from yesterday.”

“Count your blessings now, kiddo. When you get as old as me, birthdays kinda blur.”

Drunk on his own daring as much as the alcohol he’d had earlier, Bellamy asks one of the questions he’s always wanted to ask and never managed to find the courage or chance to voice. “How old are you, anyway? You never talk about it.”

“Don’t you know you’re never supposed to ask a woman how old she is?” Laughing at his expression, Raven wrinkles her nose. “I’m kidding. I’m… hang on, the math’s a little hard even when I’m completely sober.” She ticks off a few fingers, brow wrinkled in concentration. “Three hundred twenty one years young.”

It’s hard to reconcile the balance of all those years with the woman sitting at the kitchen table with him who sits with her knees up and bare feet hanging over the edge of the chair, or the gleeful prankster he’s seen help Clarke and Octavia evade Abby’s lingering caution over open use of magic.

“...is it weird?” Raven cocks her head in an unspoken question, and he elaborates, “You watched history happen.”

“You know, nobody’s ever asked me that before.”

“So, is it?”

She takes a moment to consider it. “Yes and no. You get used to adjusting to change, that’s for sure. And like I said, things blur after a while—which is why you should listen to me and celebrate your next couple birthdays extra hard before you get too jaded to care.” There’s something sad lurking behind her smile, but it’s there and gone too fast in a blink as Raven shakes her finger at him in mock reproach. “Besides, you’re a real adult now, no reason not to appreciate it.”

His gut clenches, nerves and excitement melded together until he can’t tell one from the other. _You’re a real adult now_.

He’d convinced Marcus and Abby the party was about enjoying his last week on the island, but it had only ever been a way to try and find a bridge to this exact moment: the chance to tell Raven how he feels about her. How he’s _always_ felt, even before he knew she was the mysterious something he was waiting for.

He taps his fingertips against the table in a jittery dance, building up the last bits of courage he needs. “Yeah, about that.”

“...about what?”

“About me being an adult now.”

“Is this a leadup to you trying to get me to help convince Marcus you’re going to be perfectly fine living with Miller off-island for a while, and to back off on the fatherly advice?” She chuckles fondly, shaking her head. “He means well, but I kind of figured it was getting to you so I already talked to Abby, and she agreed that—”

“It’s not about that.”

“O… kay.” Raven draws the word out slowly, studying him like she’s never seen him before. “So what is it about?”

“If I’m an adult, then I’m old enough to know what I want.” Breathless with his own daring, he reaches for her hand and holds it tight in his. “ _Who_ I want.”

“Bellamy, don’t.”

“No, I have to say this. I know I was too young before, but like you said. I’m street legal now.”

“...Bellamy.” She doesn’t yank her hand away, but she doesn’t squeeze back, either.

“Don’t say my name like that.”

“Like what?”

Shame bitter as the long grass behind the house clogs his throat, making the words hard to push past the lump. “Like you’re trying to figure out how to let me down gently.”

“It’s not…” She swallows hard, then tries another tack. “I need you to understand, this isn’t...”

Desperate and wordless, he leans in to stop her mouth with his own when Raven pauses again to collect her thoughts. Kissing her is all he’s wanted for nearly a decade and this might be his only chance to know what it feels like, if she doesn’t want him. Worse yet, once she finds a way to phrase the gentle rejection he sees in her eyes he might shatter into a million pieces with no way to glue them back together.

Raven stills and his heart leaps when for a split second she kisses him back, fingers tightening around his, only to fall again when she pulls away just as fast.

“Bellamy, I can’t. _We_ can’t.”

 _Why_ and _don’t be a coward_ and _please_ hover on the tip of his tongue, each angry word a burning hot coal.

Then the first tear winds its way down Raven’s cheek, followed by another and another until her face shines and he swallows them down, scorching himself with everything still left unsaid in favor of pulling her close. She fits in his arms like she was meant to be there; the fire lit in his belly by those coals burns hotter and then banks itself, passion smothered by guilt.

He holds her tight, head tucked neatly beneath his chin. It’s not enough, not nearly, but the sight of her crying because of something he’s done turns him to stone. When she pulls away, he doesn’t stop her.

A week later, he leaves for the mainland with Miller and does his best to forget everything.

 

**v. AGE TWENTY-FOUR**

No matter what he’d told himself when he left, deep down Bellamy had known returning to Arkadia was inevitable. Even at his angriest Raven pulled him in with all the force of the moon on the tide, calling him back to the house on the cliffs and the family waiting for him to return to the fold.

It’s strange, being on-island again after three years away. Life here is slower than in Polis, and there’s no chance of anonymity like he found in the city. He misses the deli down the block and the great bar near the job he’d quit without a second thought when the pull finally became too strong to ignore, but those minor regrets pale in the face of the relief he feels stepping off the ferry, though, the sense of home that settles back into his bones once he puts foot on land nearly bringing him to tears.

The only sour note in the resumed harmony is Raven’s obvious distance. She walks on eggshells around him, enough so that even Marcus notices something is off. The urge to shake Raven and make her see there’s no use ignoring the unfinished business between them grips Bellamy each time her gaze slides guiltily from his own.

It’s what he would have done before he left, but time apart taught him patience at the same time it made him sure of his heart. Years of swallowing back the truth and pretending he still doesn’t remember what she tried to make him forget would be worth suffering through, if it meant he’d find a chance to try again.

It only takes three months, as it turns out.

“Hey.”

Raven jumps and whips around to face him. The moonlight shining in through the greenhouse windows illuminates her face, painting her cheekbones in stark relief. “Hey.” Her smile is wary, but under that is the Raven who bought him those sandwiches and tied them irrevocably together all those years ago. “Good to have you back, kiddo.”

He won’t be put off by the nickname, no matter how much she might like him to be. “Good to be back.” Raven twitches when he doesn’t add anything else, fidgeting under his gaze. She hasn’t changed, but he _has_. This is important enough to do right, in a way he couldn’t manage before.

Finally, unable to bear the silence, Raven gives in. “Right. Well, if you’re just gonna stand there, grab a shovel and help me out or something.”

He nods and they work together in silence until Bellamy sees her shoulders inch downwards out of the corner of his eye and the tension in the little glass room fades.

 _Now or never_. He sets down the shovel and turns to face her. “Are we ever going to talk about what happened between us?”

Raven sucks in her cheeks like she’s swallowed a lemon. “I was hoping not.”

Anger flares, then recedes, leaving him nothing but _tired_. It’s been nearly three years since he’s seen Raven, and the reasons he stayed away and kept his secrets close fade in her presence. “I remember the night you kissed me, you know.”

Her eyes widen. “You remember what? I never kissed you.”

“You did. When I was sixteen, that night I came home drunk. I thought it was a dream for years.” Until he’d kissed her back on his birthday and lifted the veil she threw over the memory.

“That’s…” Raven shakes her head, panic seeping into her denial. “That should be impossible.”

“Well, it’s not, because whatever spell you tried didn’t work.”

“I’m so sorry, Bellamy. I just didn’t want you to feel… bad, I guess. I shouldn’t have done it.”

“That’s not what I’m saying. I remember it all and I don’t _care_.” He moves closer, taking hold of her wrist. “I love you, Raven, and that night you said you loved me. I think you still do.”

“That doesn’t change anything.”

“Why not?”

“Because… it just doesn’t.”

“Then it’s me. If that’s the reason I need you to say it, Raven.” His voice cracks as tears swell and spill over. “You owe me that much.”

“It’s _me_ , Bellamy.” The words burst from her chest. “If there was ever going to be anybody… oh, god, please don’t cry. Not over me.” Her words only bring more salt to his cheeks, and Raven fits her mouth over his, seizing his shoulders in a bruising grip. “I’m trying to do the right thing.”

Swiping at his cheeks with a shaking hand, Bellamy lets the coals he’s kept dim flare to life and burn through his voice. “You’re not trying to do the right thing, you’re scared. You want this, but you’d rather be alone than lose somebody like you lost the guy you loved enough to do whatever you did that backfired and made you stop aging.”

“Don’t go there.” Her voice trembles with anger.

He forges onward anyway, pent-up words tumbling out without heeding the danger he might push her so hard it ends up pushing her away for good. “I’m _going to_ , and you can’t stop me. If you ever listened to your own advice, you’d know we belong together. Fighting that is like fighting where your flowers want to grow.”

Her eyes go wide like he’s reached out and grabbed her by the throat. For a moment it seems like she’ll say something; then spots dance in his vision and once he blinks hard enough to clear them, she’s gone.

 

**vi. AGE THREE HUNDRED TWENTY FOUR**

When she leaves the house, Raven intends to run. She’s disappeared before, on the few occasions the latest Griffin descendent hasn’t wanted her gifts _or_ a mentor. It’s the coward’s move, but so was deciding never dying and never fully belonging to anyone was a price worth paying to make sure she’d never be alone again, so long as the Griffin curse stuck fast.

She finds her feet leading her away from the road and into the forest instead, down a path grown over with three hundred years worth of vegetation since the last time she walked it.

The birches shine like a beacon in the moonlight when she reaches them, giving the clearing they encircle a ghostly glow.

She kneels in front of the youngest among them, reaching out with one shaking hand to rest it on the cool bark as she makes her choice and tugs on the links she forged between them, one last time. “Hey, Finn. Been a while.”

When she breaks the circle, she leaves behind the necklace she hasn’t taken off since she first put it on, and with it immortality.

It’s strange to feel the weight of time again after so long free of its chains. The walk home takes nearly two hours instead of the one it took to get there and her knees ache in a way that promises she’ll need magic and not Advil to soothe the pain by the time she’s done with it, but when she arrives Bellamy’s silhouette is visible in the window and the sight makes her heart beat out a rhythm she thought she’d forgotten.

Raven pauses at the steps leading up to the porch to gather her courage, then mounts the stairs with her heart in her throat. Freedom fizzes and bubbles inside her, tugging her forward even as fear tries to drag her back, and the click of the lock as she closes the door behind her is a declaration as loud as a trumpet. Each step she takes towards the kitchen feels like moving towards the edge of a cliff and coming home, all at once.

“Bellamy?”

He looks up from his seat at the table, frown lines carving furrows around his mouth. “You left.”

“I did.” She takes another step forward. “I came back, though.”

He narrows his eyes, taking her in. “Where’s your necklace?”

Buried in the birch grove under a tree she planted herself when she’d hidden Finn’s ashes, along with the last of her excuses.

It’s a story to tell him later, so Raven answers the question he couldn’t have known to ask instead of the one he did. “It was time to let go.”

Bellamy looks confused, but a dim shade of hope passes over his face. “I don’t understand.”

Coming to the last piece of solid ground left to them, Raven takes a deep breath and launches herself off the edge. “I wasn’t entirely honest when I said there was no way to reverse what I did to myself.”

“You…” It takes him a moment to put it together, and once he does Bellamy looks gobsmacked. “I don’t understand. Why did you…”

“I needed a push to let go. To be brave enough to say goodbye.” She steps closer, laying a hand on his sleeve. “I needed you.”

His eyes widen, and he moves her hand to his chest, over the thundering beat of his heart. “Say it again.”

“I need you, Bellamy.” Swallowing hard, she lets the words she’s been biting back for years spill out. “I love you.”

When she’d kissed him, it cracked her heart open; when he’d kissed her, it broke entirely. When they kiss each other it puts the pieces back together, and for the first time in three hundred years, three months, and three days she knows what it feels like to be whole.


End file.
